One of my goals for 2026 is to start blogging again. It isn’t really the thing anymore—I guess if I wanted to be on trend, I’d start a Substack or something else that has appeared since I last looked around. But the reason I want a blog is simple: writing helps me focus my thoughts. This is a way for me to do that.
So, to whoever wanders through the interwebs and accidentally finds this, remember: this isn’t really for you… it’s for me… so get over it.
That sounds more aggressive than I intended.
Discovering Simone Weil
At the end of 2024, I read Simone Weil for the first time. The book was The Love of God & Affliction. I found her writing fascinating, and naturally I kept reading. Now, after only a year with her work, I can safely say I still know next to nothing about her thought.
The podcaster Dan Carlin likes to describe himself on Hardcore History as “not a historian, but a fan of history.” That’s how I would describe my relationship with Weil right now. I’m not a Weilian—just a fan of Weil.
Love as Attention
One of the ideas that has really stayed with me is her understanding of love as attention. She writes extensively about attention, but this one line captures its essence:
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
One of the few voluntary acts we truly have is choosing what we give our attention to—or choosing whether we allow someone or something else to claim it. This becomes even more important in a world where attention has become an economic commodity.
The attention economy is built on the belief that attention is scarce. Because of this, companies fight to capture as much of it as possible. Websites and services are designed to keep you there for as long as they can, because your attention serves their purposes.
And when our attention is fixed there, we ignore what—and more importantly who—is right in front of us.
What We Fail to See
Sometimes that’s precisely the point. The “bread and circuses” of Rome kept people distracted, their attention fixed on spectacle rather than substance. Much of Simone Weil’s writing on attention highlights how easily we overlook the suffering around us—and how suffering continues because we refuse to see it.
She writes:
“The afflicted need nothing else in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.”
We choose not to focus our attention on the suffering before us, and therefore we comfortably do nothing about it. We choose not to see. Giving our attention to the afflicted is dangerous to the status quo.
The same is true in how we respond to those who cause harm. We focus on the evil they do and overlook the fact that they, too, bear the image of God. This doesn’t mean we don’t confront the evil, just that we don’t neglect to see the perpetrator as someone who also exists under Jesus’ grace.
Attention and the People We Love
And of course, the same is true for the people closest to us—the ones we claim to love. Many of us carry devices in our pockets that promise endless capabilities. All they ask in return is our attention, and we hand it over freely.
So we sit in a car—whether for a long drive or a short one—and give our attention to our phones instead of the person beside us. We drift into the world Sherry Turkle described so well in Alone Together: sitting in public spaces (though we do that less and less) without interacting, because our devices have claimed our focus. We read our books, watch our movies, and go to our concerts with our attention willingly dragged off from the moment into another direction.
We don’t see anyone—including those we love most—because we’ve handed our attention to people, companies, and systems that want to use it for their own ends.
Attention is an act of love.
So What Do We Do?
So what do we do? The simplest answer is to begin giving our attention to the people around us. Of course, this is difficult. Habits are hard to change, especially when the person you’re trying to focus on is also conditioned to give their attention away.
But try anyway. Put down whatever you’re doing when you choose to give someone your attention. When it feels awkward or uncomfortable, remember: this is what it feels like to practice something you’re not used to. Keep going.
In my faith, love is described very simply as sacrifice. Jesus on the cross is the greatest example of love in my tradition. Giving your attention to something meaningless is easy. But if attention is love, then it requires sacrifice—and sacrifice rarely comes easily.
Easy things are rarely good for us. Sacrifice usually is.